Thinking the Unthinkable Founder and Director Nik Gowing joined Sainty Hird’s Ralph Grayson on The Boardroom Path podcast. The aim was to explore how boards need to operate in a world where stability can no longer be assumed. Also, why traditional approaches to governance are struggling to keep pace with the accelerating disruption of a system that is being ruptured.
There is still a dangerous assumption among C-suite leaders and boardrooms that the world is broadly predictable. That risk can be managed through structure, process, and experience. That assumption is breaking down at high speed.
As Nik Gowing explained in the podcast, “Many in leadership do not really want to embrace the enormity of uncertainty, which is now enveloping us.” The aim must not just to be to think the unthinkable, but also the unpalatable. That is because the evidence of what looms is usually there, even though it is unwelcome,
The problem is not just disruption, it is the velocity. “The way things have been is not the way things are going to be,” he says. The mindset is often to plan for a decade out. But “2035 is not nine years from now. It’s a few hours from now: this evening. 2035h !”
Yet many boards are still operating on outdated rhythms: quarterly meetings, linear plans, and assumptions of stability that no longer exist.
Nik describes this as “zombie orthodoxies”. Deeply embedded ways of thinking that no longer fit reality. “What qualifies you for being appointed to a role… actually disqualifies you from understanding the scale of what is happening.”
The warning signs are rarely absent. They are simply ignored. “The evidence is there. It’s unpalatable. But you may not want to look at it.”
What replaces stability is something far more volatile. Nik likens the new reality to a pinball game on a fairground. “The ball is moving ever faster in directions you cannot control… one thing leads to another, which you weren’t expecting.”
This is the new unthinkable reality that most leaders struggle to appreciate and talk about, then embrace.
And yet many leaders do already sense this shift privately, stating “That’s the way I feel… but I don’t really want to talk about it too loudly.”
The deeper issue is structural. “Boards are not designed to actually achieve what they’re expected to achieve,” Gowing argues. And governance cycles are too slow for today’s reality. “You’ve got to be meeting far more regularly.”
The shift required is from prediction to preparedness. “You’ve got to think the unthinkable… it could happen tomorrow within 10 hours.”
That demands a different kind of leadership mindset, what Nik labels “new mind muscle.” Thinking more broadly and more adventurously. Being willing to challenge orthodoxy, and long-held assumptions. “Being prepared to break eggs rather than protect eggs.”. And crucially: “We need heretics to challenge us.”
Because in a world that is this unstable, the role of leadership is no longer to assume control, but to be ready when control disappears.
“This is a different kind of board now,” Nik says. “You’ve got to realise the realities we’re facing.”
